Local band Diego Paulo blends musical flavors from around the world

As local Newark bands go, Diego Paulo is boss. Make that bossa nova, the Brazilian style of jazz that they've adopted as their signature sound.

That "Girl From Ipanema" vibe — as is the case with most of the band's influences — was inspired by personal experience. Zachary Humenik (vocals/guitars) says he first fell in love with bossa nova during a trip to Brazil.

"My first travel experience really was helping me translate the bossa nova feel to people that never really understood it before, and try to have all of us put an American spin on it, so that someone who doesn't know what bossa nova is will be able to understand it a little bit more," Humenik says.

Tyler Doherty (vocals/guitars) and Humenik, who are brothers, played together in Bellefonte, their previous band which has since broken up. All the band members have also played together in jazz ensembles at the university.

As Diego Paulo, Doherty, Humenik and Sam Nobles (vocals/bass/guitar) had been playing together for approximately three months when they asked Katie Dill — a well-known local artist in her own right — to do vocals on their cover of "Girl from Ipanema."

"I knew of Zach and he called me up and was like, ‘Hi, this is Zach Humenik,' and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I think he's in American Buffalo.' [Dill had mistaken him for Zachary Thomas, the vocalist and guitarist from American Buffalo.] I was like, ‘Did that kid just ask me to be in American Buffalo? What's going on?' " Dill says.

When Dill (vocals/banjo/ukelele) showed up to sing with them, she was surprised to see Nobles there as well.

"We knew each other," she says. "We didn't know we were going to be playing together that day."

Although they've been together as a complete group for only a year, the members of Diego Paulo are close, both as musicians and friends.

"I think at this point we have such an understanding of each other that we kind of always edit each other and add our own flavor to everything we do," Dill says.

Since they started playing together, Diego Paulo has expanded their style to include bluegrass, rock and African influences. Nobles says the African sounds in their music are a result of listening to Ghana Special, a compilation album of funky and soulful Ghanaian music, on repeat during a particular drive from Newark to Philadelphia.

"It clicked with us really well — not intentionally — but one day we just started playing and it came out sounding like Africa," Nobles says. "So now we've got some Brazil, some Africa and some America in there too."

The band explores this wide variety of sounds on their first full-length album, which they expect to release in late April or early May. ("Just in time for the summer sun," Humenik says with a laugh.)

"It's 10 different songs and it's a wide variety of tunes," says Tyler Holloway (drums/congos). "We've got rock on there, we've got Americana, there's bossa nova, reggae, jazz — all sorts of stuff. We've got some Africa on there. We basically tried to sum up the main feel of our sound as a band with this album, with every song having a different style but still sounding like Diego Paulo."

To put together the album, which is still unnamed, Diego Paulo enlisted the help of several friends. Steve Scher, a friend of Holloway's since his freshman year of college, produced the album and provided the band with recording equipment. The album was recorded at Nobles' house in Wilmington, and is being mastered by Grammy award-winning producer Warren Russell Smith at a New York City studio called The Magic Shop, where Holloway interned last winter.

Working in the studio enabled Diego Paulo to do more mixing than is possible when playing live, and to have their friends play on the album. Rob Nowicki plays trombone on the album and Davien Bailey plays trumpet.

On Saturday night, Diego Paulo (along with Atlas, another band featuring students from the university) played to a sold-out East End Café — their first show since taking a break to record their album. Despite a few initial technical difficulties, their 10-song set list, which included the very danceable "Aleksandria," "Sail Away" and "A Viagem," had the entire crowd jamming.

After spending a month recording, the band was happy to have an opportunity to play live.

"We usually play live so it's kind of been weird to have to go into the studio and do it so methodically," says Holloway. "It's especially been great with this snow. We're all trapped here at my house in the living room, and we've just been jamming for like ten hours. It's been so refreshing for each of us. It's been awesome."

For more information about Diego Paulo and to hear their music, visit http://www.myspace.com/diegopaulo.

For more information about Atlas and to hear their music, visit http://www.myspace.com/atlasde.